The Six Habits of Highly Effective Sales Engineers

It’s a must read for anybody in sales.

Whether you are new to the industry, or a seasoned professional Chris’ book offers something for everyone. While it focuses on successful demonstrations, the advice works for all aspects of being a Sales Engineer. This book focuses on communicating, building better relationships and forging connections. These skills are must-haves no matter whom you are dealing with. The book starts with two basic assumptions, everyone is a seller and everyone can learn from other perspectives. It is easy to read and contains practical and easy to understand examples from someone who has not only been around the block but also learns from his stumbles and from other reviews of his work. Being a Sales Engineer is not only about technology and “being a geek,” but also about human emotion and the science of effective communications. This book breaks the science down into six easy to understand habits that can help anyone, be they a sales engineer or not.

The content is great as someone looking to pivot from consulting to technical sales. I would recommend this book. I took off a star simply because the book is riddled with so many grammatical mistakes. Take page 59 as an example: “We will discuss what it is that we should be probing for when do get the opportunity.”

I have read Chris' book and loved every page of it! I am currently looking for jobs in the sales engineering field and this book was great to help me communicate to my future employers what a great sales engineer looks like and how they should ideally interact with their sales counterparts. I even quoted the six highly effective habits of a sales engineer in one of my interviews recently and recommended the book to the director of sales engineering who was very interested. I would recommend this book to anyone currently in the sale engineer role or those that are in a technical role who would like to bridge the gap to sales. Chris' book is definitely well written and easy to understand.

A really thorough and complete guide for pre sales engineers of all types! I loved the structured approach this book takes (you can tell it was written by a technical person for technical people). While some of this book is common sense, several recommendations were truly eye opening. After reading this book, I’ve realized several mistakes I’ve been making over the years and Chris clearly explains why they are mistakes. Whether you are just starting out or a seasoned veteran, everyone will walk away with something from this book!

This book is transformative for the technical seller coming straight from college and a valuable reflection for the senior sales engineer. Chris has a conversational writing style, making this an easy read from cover to cover yet the book reviews all of the major topics such as the pre-qualification call, how to probe to get the necessary information from the client, preparing for the demonstration, as well as how to perform well in the presentation. As a senior tech sales manager, I will ask my team to review this book to improve their performance.

I wish this book existed when I started out as a Sales Engineer. Chris uses his experiences and person journey to create 6 actionable habits that stand out as a practical guide for SE’s at any skill level. The Six Habits is not just a book but a toolkit for excellence in technical sales, offering a blend of inspiration and practical advice that can impact your effectiveness as a sales engineer. I highly recommend reading it.

If you think you're not selling anything you're mistaken. This book is about tools and processes we all could use more of to assist us in being better communicators, build better relationships and connecting on a higher level with any potential "prospect". While there is a lot of niche information, you can apply the six habits portions to any area and any field. There's really no facet of life that I can think of where the book does not apply. I mean we all need to seek additional partners for our cause and eventual successes, and in life in general, we all should be probing and digging deeper to become experts in our field. We can't do any of that without preparation, and we certainly can't afford not to practice and while we strive to be perfect, we often get stuck in "good enough" and that should NOT be the end goal. Would you want a surgeon to look at you when you awoke and say "How do you feel, I feel like I did good enough, good luck!" Lots of information here to consume making this an awesome book to refer to again and again. Really good for a first offering and tons of concepts to use in the journey of sales but also in the larger journey, called life and living.

Best book for people dealing with sales job

Five stars for this book and Chris' very hands on advice.

It would be super easy to make a boring book about pre-sales. Besides all knowledge on it, it is an enjoyable experience.

This is simply an amazing book that can help new SEs and also experienced SEs to perfect their craft. The details and explanations are just amazing. Thanks Chris for this great book.

I actually heard about this book directly from the author Chris White who contacted me on LinkedIn after I joined a pre-sales community. At first I was a little skeptical that a random guy contacted me and recommended his own book, but I decided to buy it anyway as I am new to Solutions Engineering and have been hungry for knowledge. So glad I got it! At times it felt like the book was written directly to me as I transitioned from Customer Success and was still trying to wrap my head around moving from a support based role to a sales position. It is an easy read but absolutely packed with wisdom that you can tell came from experience. I've highlighted lots of sections and plan to come back to this book many times throughout my career. Full recommendation to anyone in a sales engineering role or is interested in what it takes to be a sales engineer.